. "We buried one of those
men this noon. His grandson, his niece, and those who saw him
frequently, swear it was this living being who has such a wound as the
one that caused the death of that man. There is only one thing to
do--see who we buried."

"The permits?" Graham suggested.

"I shall telephone the judge," Robinson answered, "and he can send
them out, but I shan't wait for hours doing nothing. I am going to the
grave at once."

"A waste of time," Paredes murmured.

"I don't understand," Silas Blackburn whined, "You say the doors were
locked. Then how could anybody have got in that room to be murdered? How
did I get out?"

Robinson turned on Paredes angrily.

"I'm not through with you yet. Before I am I'll get what I want
from you."

He stormed away to the telephone. No one spoke. The doctor's rumpled head
was still bent over the back of Silas Blackburn's chair. The infused eyes
didn't waver from the crimson stain and the healed wound, and Blackburn
remained huddled among the cushions, his shoulders twitching. Paredes
commenced gathering up his cards. Katherine watched him out of
expressionless eyes. Graham walked to her side. Rawlins, as always
phlegmatic, remained motionless, waiting for his superior.

Bobby threw off his recent numbness. He realized the disturbing parallel
in the actions of his grandfather and himself. He had come to the Cedars
unconsciously, perhaps directed by an evil, external influence, on the
night of the first murder. Now, it appeared, the man he was accused of
killing had also wandered under an unknown impulse that night. Was the
same subtle control responsible in both cases? Was there at the Cedars a
force that defied physical laws, moving its inhabitants like puppets for
special aims of its own? Yet, he recalled, there was something here
friendly to him. After the movement of Howells's body and the
disappearance of the evidence, the return of Silas Blackburn stripped
Robinson's threats of power and seemed to place the solution beyond the
district attorney's trivial reach.

The silence and the delay increased their weight upon the little group.
Silas Blackburn, huddled in his chair, was grayer, more haggard than he
had been at first. He appeared attentive to an expected summons. He
seemed fighting the idea of going back.

The proximity of Graham to Katherine quieted the turmoil of Bobby's
thoughts. If he could only have foreseen this return he would have
listened to the wh